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Under current Department of Labor (DoL) rules, salaried workers with certain types of job responsibilities and who are paid more than $23,660 can be classified as exempt from overtime pay. This classification allows for flexible working arrangements, liberating employees from punching a clock, and reducing compliance costs for businesses who don’t have to track what their employees are doing at any given second.

The Obama administration, however, objected to the freedom and flexibility offered by those regulations and sought to double the dollar threshold for when someone is required to be eligible for overtime pay, regardless of job responsibilities or the needs of the employee or company.

What exactly President Obama thought this would achieve is unclear, but the negative consequences of the social engineering were clear enough to see. For example, one small businessman in Maryland with just 35 employees estimated that the rule change would have cost him $35,000 per year, roughly as much as adding another employee. To avoid this hit to his bottom line, the business owner had planned to do what so many other small business owners planned in response to these new regulations: he would switch his seven employees affected by these new regulations from salaried to hourly workers. Even this fix left him facing higher compliance costs from tracking hours, even as it left his employees with less freedom, flexibility and professional status.

“That means that we can’t let employees work from home because we can’t track their hours. Employees who leave early to pick up their kids must lose paid hours. An employee who works a late night must take time off that same week even if he would rather have time off the next week. Worst of all, every employee must start punching a clock while every minute of his day is scrutinized.”

Rather than stand aside and allow the Obama administration to push forward with these regulations, the challenging states successfully persuaded the judge to halt implementation. The states correctly noted that the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the basis of the DoL rulemaking authority, does not actually authorize a salary threshold for overtime decisions, this was made up by the department. Under the FLSA, overtime exemption is supposed to only be determined by job function (those working in an executive, administrative or professional capacity). This is yet another example (thankfully, in this case) of the Obama administration’s aggressive regulatory overreach being slapped down.

Given the lame duck status of President Obama, we can only hope that this injunction puts the final nail in his quest to force through these destructive regulations. The new administration must hear the voices of small businesses nationwide and withdraw these overtime regulations on day one.

Update: The Obama administration announced yesterday that they intend to appeal the Court's decision freezing their overtime regulations. Given the timing, the Trump administration would be able to pull that appeal once they take office, so one wonders what the Obama administration is thinking... we will keep you informed!

A little more than a month ago, the White House and tax-writers in the House and Senate rolled out the Unified Framework for Fixing Our Broken Tax Code. The goal of the framework was to provide a sign to both members of Congress and the American people on the direction that the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee would take when they began work on this crucial effort.

FreedomWorks Foundation's Regulatory Action Center submitted comments to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last week supporting the agency's stay and review of unnecessary and burdensome methane emission regulations on the domestic oil and gas industry. FreedomWorks Foundation further calls upon EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to investigate the process by which such laughably bad regulations were finalized and fire those responsible.

Over 250 years ago, courageous colonists took up arms and defended the right against unlawful search and seizure in the American Revolution. Fueled by outrageous searches by British law enforcement, our founding fathers enshrined within our constitution the Fourth Amendment, which reads, in part: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.”

FreedomWorks Foundation submitted, thus far, the only comment to an open Coast Guard docket requesting information on regulations to review and/or reverse, in accordance with President Trump's executive orders on regulatory reform.

Recently, the economic disparity of the urban-rural divide has garnered substantial attention, especially as it relates to Internet and technological expansion. Rural economies suffer from a lack of Internet connectivity relative to urban areas, with rural adults being 10 percent less likely to have broadband or smartphones than urban adults.

From a so-called “economic miracle” to a human rights disaster, Venezuela has followed in the footsteps of literally every single socialist or communist country ever with its country in complete collapse. Crime is on the rise, the people are starving, protests are going all throughout the country, and unconfirmed rumors are coming out that President Nicolas Maduro is considering leaving.

An issue that has a tendency to come into the public consciousness from time to time is bringing back Glass-Steagall. Initially repealed in 1999 by the Financial Services Modernization Act, primarily known as the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, the law that separated commercial and investment banking has received renewed support with both party platforms during last year’s presidential election calling for it to be reinstated.

Over the past several months, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has taken a step back on federal justice reform efforts, regressing to purportedly “tough on crime” stances. From advising increased penalties for nonviolent offenders to more recently promising an increase in the use of civil asset forfeiture by the federal government, Sessions has been doing everything in his power to give the Department of Justice (DOJ)’s full support to 80s-era policies from which many conservatives have abandoned in favor of evidenced-based practices that reduce recidivism and enhance public safety.

Over the past several years, there has been a move to make college campuses an ideological bubble where only preferred and pre-approved perspectives are allowed, known as “safe spaces.” It seems this line of thinking is not only on college campuses as some of our politicians have been calling for that as well. Most recently, Chairwoman of the Federal Reserve Janet Yellen openly suggested turning the Federal Reserve into a safe space.

Yesterday, FreedomWorks Foundation submitted comments in support of the FCC's proposed Restoring Internet Freedom Rule. This rule, proposed under Republican FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, would reverse FCC's 2015 classification and regulation of Internet service providers (ISPs) as public utilities or common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act, more commonly referenced as "net neutrality" rules. This would return ISPs to a light-touch regulatory framework that allowed for the Internet to grow and flourish into the revolutionary economic engine we know today.